Global Warming

Rising Tides

Sea levels around the world have risen by an average of nearly 3 inches since 1992, with some areas experiencing a rise of more than 9 inches, according to a NASA analysis of satellite observations.

Experts say that changes in sea level vary widely around the world due to local conditions, but climate change is the main driver.

Scientists estimate about a third of the rise is due to expansion caused by warming oceans, while the remainder is evenly divided between ice loss of the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the melting of mountain glaciers.

NASA scientists told a press conference that they now have data to help planners determine what coastal areas will be threatened by sea level rises over the next century.

NASA says rises of up to 3 feet during that period are “unavoidable.”

Even today, normal spring high tides cause street flooding in sections of Miami, something that didn’t happen regularly just a few decades ago.

Tragic Cleansing

About the only promising development to come out of the conflict-ravaged Middle East in the past few years is a pronounced drop in greenhouse gas emissions.

With untold thousands of refugees fleeing to Europe from Syria and Iraq, the shattered economies they leave behind are in no shape to burn the volume of fossil fuels they did prior to the onset of the Syrian civil war.

Nitrogen dioxide emissions have plunged 40 percent over Damascus and 50 percent over Aleppo since Arab Spring protests reached Syria in 2011.

Writing in the journal Science Advances, Jos Lelieveld of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry says the cleaner air observed by atmospheric monitoring from space is due to “international boycotts, armed conflict and related mass migration of people.”

But he adds that air pollution reductions instituted by neighboring Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have also contributed to the region’s overall drop in carbon emissions.

This graphic of nitrogen dioxide measurements from space illustrates the trend toward less greenhouse gas emissions.

Environment

Long-Term Global Warming Trend Continues



Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) say 2012 was the ninth warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. The ten warmest years in the 132-year record have all occurred since 1998. The last year that was cooler than average was 1976.

The map at the top depicts temperature anomalies, or changes, by region in 2012; it does not show absolute temperature. Reds and blues show how much warmer or cooler each area was in 2012 compared to an averaged base period from 1951–1980. For more explanation of how the analysis works, read: World of Change: Global Temperatures.

The average temperature in 2012 was about 14.6 degrees Celsius (58.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.55°C (1.0°F) warmer than the mid-20th century base period. The average global temperature has increased 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880, and most of that change has occurred in the past four decades.

The line plot above shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2011 as recorded by NASA GISS, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, and the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom. All four institutions tally temperature data from stations around the world and make independent judgments about whether the year was warm or cool compared to other years. Though there are minor variations from year to year, all four records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the last decade as the warmest.

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The burning of wood is a major source of black carbon the world over.





Black carbon, or soot, is making a much larger contribution to global warming than previously recognised, according to research in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres..

Scientists say that particles from diesel engines and wood burning could be having twice as much warming effect as assessed in past estimates.

They say it ranks second only to carbon dioxide as the most important climate-warming agent.

Black carbon aerosols have been known to warm the atmosphere for many years by absorbing sunlight. They also speed the melting of ice and snow.

This new study concludes the dark particles are having a warming effect approximately two thirds that of carbon dioxide, and greater than methane.

Black carbon is said to be a significant source of rapid warming in the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia. The particles are also said to have an impact on rainfall patterns in the Asian monsoon.

Environment

The British government is looking into a proposal to have volcanos generate power to homes within a decade. The geothermal energy would be piped to Britain through the world's longest seabed power cable from Icelandic volcanoes. Experts say this would be no more expensive than the next generation of nuclear energy.

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Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2011 rose 2.5 percent to 34 billion tonnes, a new record, Germany's renewable energy institute has reported.

If the current trend is sustained, worldwide CO2 emissions will go up by another 20 percent to over 40 billion tonnes by 2020.

China led the table of emitters in 2011 with 8.9 billion tonnes, up from 8.3 billion a year earlier. Its CO2 output was 50 percent more than the 6 billion tonnes in the United States.

India was third, ahead of Russia, Japan and Germany.

Environment

The images below show the Antarctic ozone hole on September 16 (the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer) in the years 1979, 1987, 2006, and 2011.

Stratospheric ozone is typically measured in Dobson Units (DU), which is the number of molecules required to create a layer of pure ozone 0.01 millimeters thick at a temperature of 0 degrees Celsius and an air pressure of 1 atmosphere (the pressure at the surface of the Earth). The average amount of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere is 300 Dobson Units, equivalent to a layer 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) thick — the height of 2 pennies stacked together.



In 1979 — when scientists were just coming to understand that atmospheric ozone could be depleted — the area of ozone depletion over Antarctica grew to 1.1 million square kilometers, with a minimum ozone concentration of 194 Dobson Units. In 1987, as the Montreal Protocol was being signed, the area of the hole reached 22.4 million square kilometers and ozone concentrations dropped to 109 DU. By 2006, the worst year for ozone depletion to date, the numbers were 29.6 million square kilometers and just 84 DU. By 2011, the most recent year with a complete data set, the hole stretched 26 million square kilometers and dropped to 95 DU.

The Antarctic hole seems to be stabilizing and may be slowly recovering. The focus of scientists now is to make sure that it is healing as expected. The amount of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) in the atmosphere has stopped rising in recent years, and may actually be decreasing. Changes in the ozone hole now are not significantly driven by changes in CFCs, but instead driven by year-to-year changes in weather in the stratosphere.

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Plans to open up a new Australian "coal export rush" could turn a single Queensland region into the seventh largest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions on the planet, undermining international efforts to keep global warming below 2C.

Nine proposed "mega mines" in the Galilee Basin would, at full capacity, result in 705m tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere. This level of emissions would surpass those of all but six nations in the world. By comparison, the UK emitted 549.3 million tonnes of CO2 from all sources in 2011.